Moments after Daryll Clark took a knee to end Saturday's game against Indiana, he hugged Pat Mauti.
The two could not be more different -- not as players, not their journeys -- but there they stood, embracing for the final time on the Beaver Stadium field, brought together by five years as teammates on the Penn State football team.
"It was everything like I thought it was gonna be," Clark said after the Nittany Lions' 31-20 win over the Hoosiers before 107,379 spectators on Senior Day. "I tried to tell myself I wasn't gonna cry. But it just hit me."
Clark recalled his final pregame trip from the Lasch Football Building to Beaver Stadium on one of the team's blue buses.
The ride was a little slower, the fans cheered a little louder, and his eyes began to well with tears.
"I remember Graham [Zug] -- he always sits behind me. He tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'It's all right. We'll get this "W" today,' " Clark recalled. "That was when I cried."
Some of that emotion may have carried past kickoff, as Clark threw an interception on each of No. 19 Penn State's first two drives. The Lions (9-2, 5-2 Big Ten) also fumbled two punt returns in a first half that saw them turn the ball over four times.
Penn State rebounded, however, as Clark helped dig his team out of an early 10-0 hole. The co-captain finished the day 17-for-28 for 194 yards with a rushing and a passing touchdown.
He was aided on the other side of the ball by seniors Sean Lee and Jared Odrick, who complemented redshirt junior Navorro Bowman in what may very well have been the linebacker's Beaver Stadium finale as well.
Lee, the other captain, finished with 10 tackles and four pass break-ups. Odrick delivered a vicious block on Indiana running back Trea Burgess after Bowman intercepted a Ben Chappell screen pass. The block freed up Bowman, who easily took the pick 73 yards for a touchdown to break a 10-10 tie with 6:54 left in the third quarter.
"It was play-action. I thought it was a pass, so I was dropping back, but I seen the running back turn around," said Bowman, who could declare for the NFL draft once the season ends. "He dropped the ball, missed it and I was there to watch it and run with it."
But Saturday was about the 20 players introduced individually before kickoff.
Be it an all-conference star from Youngstown, Ohio, like Clark or a walk-on from Mandeville, La., like Mauti, each has left his legacy in Happy Valley.
Look no further than Jeremy Boone, who has led the Big Ten in punting in each of the last two seasons. His final punt -- a 36-yarder with less than a minute to play --was fittingly downed at the 1-yard line of the Hoosiers (4-7, 1-6).
"From the first kick to my last kick, the whole experience here at Penn State's been unbelievable," Boone said. "Just to know that because your staff believed in me to be out there punting the ball away, it's unbelievable.
"But as far as that last kick goes, it doesn't get much bigger than that: to pin them on the 1-yard line."
